A news and opinion perspective from the Islands. While the rest of you beaver away on the mainland, I comment about what goes on from Waikiki.

Monday, April 17, 2006

An Ugly Reality

Thomas Sowell says: Thank heaven for the massive marches across the country by those favoring illegal immigrants. These marches revealed the ugly truth behind the fog of pious words and clever political spin from the media and from both Democrats and Republicans in Washington.

"Guest workers"? Did any of the strident speakers, with their in-your-face bombast in Spanish, sound like guests? Did they sound like people who wanted to become Americans?

Were they even asking for amnesty? They didn't sound like they were asking for anything. They sounded like they were telling. Demanding. Threatening.

Somebody must have told them that their Mexican flags that dominated the earlier marches were not making a good impression on television, so they started flying American flags. But such cosmetic changes did not keep the ugly reality from coming through in their hostile speeches.

These were not the speeches of people who wanted to join American society but people who wanted their own turf on American soil -- in disregard and defiance of what American citizens want.

Europe has already been through this "guest worker" policy that we are being urged to follow. They have learned the hard way what it means to have a growing foreign population in their midst -- a population that insists on remaining foreign and hostile to the culture, values and people around them.

Some European countries have learned this lesson at the cost of riots and bloodshed in the streets and lives lost in terrorist attacks. Others have only had to contend with national polarization -- thus far -- but polarization is not a small thing.READ IT ALL